Cops
Out of the Schools! No to Mayoral Control! For
Teacher-Student-Worker-Parent Control of the Schools

NYC Teachers, Students Under AttackClose Down the
“Rubber Rooms” – Reinstate All “Excessed” Teachers!
Union Control of Hiring!

Joel Klein,
a/k/a “The Terminator,” ordered hundreds of experienced
teachers “excessed” as part of
yet another “reorganization” of city schools. 700 teachers in
alternative schools lost their positions
and had to reapply for jobs. Now he wants to “terminate” teachers in
name of management control.(Photo: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times)

The opening of school this fall,
said United Federation of Teachers (UFT) president Randi Weingarten at
a citywide
meeting of chapter chairmen, was the smoothest in years. “Only” 4,000
grievances over class size (as opposed to 6,000 the year before).
Thousands of
teachers “taking advantage” of “open market” transfers – having lost
seniority
rights under the 2005 contract and now subject to the whim of
principles trying
imitate the dictatorial ways of Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and his
boss,
Mayor Bloomberg. Just one fly in the ointment, she said: the numbers of
teachers who have been thrown out of their jobs and are cooling their
heels in
Absent Teacher Reserves (ATR) or sitting in “rubber rooms” around the
city because
charges had been brought against them. We’re talking about hundreds
of
experienced teachers here who have been victimized by the
Bloomberg/Klein drive
for “management control.”

When the NYC
Department of Education decided to “reorganize”
District 79, the district encompassing a variety of alternative schools
and
General Education Diploma (GED) programs, some 700 teachers lost their
positions. They had to reapply for jobs some had held for decades.
Interviews
were conducted helter-skelter, many at the last minute and even over
the phone,
by hot-shot administrators from DOE headquarters in the Boss Tweed
Courthouse.
These administrators, many of whom have next to no experience teaching,
flunked
highly qualified teachers because they weren’t up on the latest lingo
and fads
being pushed by Klein & Co. Some had taught in these “second
chance” programs
for decades. Among those “excessed” and sent to languish in ATR land
were black
PhDs with years in the classroom.

To justify this
massacre of experienced educators, Tweed
officials cooked up bogus statistics, claiming that in “some” GED
programs only
17 percent graduated. But the DOE’s own figures show much higher
graduation
rates for these students; the students are in programs for “at risk”
students
in the first place; and many school principals pretend that students
have
“transferred” to District 79 programs in order to hide their drop-out
rate. UFT
tops argue that at least the teachers are still drawing a paycheck. But
since
Weingarten gave up seniority rights for tenured teachers in the
previous
contract, the DOE is gearing
up to eliminate tenure altogether. In an interview Klein said in
response to a
question about “excessed” teachers being used as highly paid
substitutes:
“After a certain period, we should be able to terminate those
employees” (Daily
News, 1 September). No wonder Klein is now getting known as “the
Terminator.”

On
top of everything else, due to the drastic cut in teaching personnel,
city
schools now have far fewer classes for general education diplomas,
pregnant and
parenting teenagers and others. As a result there are waiting lists
of
16-year-olds and 17-year-olds trying to get their GEDs, even though
students
have a constitutional right in the state of New York to an
education up
to the age of 21. So thanks to the latest reorganization by the
management
specialists in City Hall and Tweed, we have hundreds of students who
can’t get
classes while hundreds of teachers are held “in reserve.” This is no
accident.
The DOE has been trying to eliminate alternative education programs for
several
years, reducing the number of sites from 59 to six, and slashing the
district
budgets by many billions of dollars.

Behind
this is a program to drastically restructure the schools as part of
their
program to corporatize and privatize “public” education. Instead of a
quality
education being a right, they want to respond to “market forces” by
supplying a
“two-tiered” education system with good schools for a petty-bourgeois
elite and
stripped down, scripted 3Rs programs for future low-skilled workers
(“hamburger
flippers”). This capitalist program represents a wholesale
assault on
the schools. Teachers, students and parents are blamed for the crimes
of a
system which has been starved of funding for decades. It is synthesized
in the
“No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) Act which is up for renewal this fall.
While
George Bush wants to make this his signal “accomplishment” – since the
war on
Iraq, immigration “reform” and every other initiative of his
administration has
blown up in his face – the fact is that, like the “war on terror” and
attacks
on civil liberties in the United States, the Democrats are
co-responsible for
NCLB. So, too, is the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the UFT’s
parent,
which favored “principles” behind the law.

Under
this draconian piece of legislation, schools are denied funds and then
closed
if they can’t increase scores on standardized tests which notoriously
discriminate against racial and ethnic minorities, poor and immigrant
students.
In their place, publicly financed, privately run schools (charter
schools) are
introduced. The prime example is New Orleans, where the public school
system
has been practically wiped out by city, state and federal authorities
in the
wake of Hurricane Katrina. Meanwhile, since total privatization has
been a
financial flop (witness the near-bankruptcy of Edison Schools), an
“education
industry” of vendors and contractors has grown up feeding off the
education
system financed by tax dollars. The National Education Association
(NEA), which
has been lukewarm about NCLB rather than flatly
opposing it, dubbed this the “No Contractor Left Behind” act. Most of
the big
textbook, testing and tutoring outfits, not surprisingly, are big
contributors
to both Republican and Democratic candidates (such as Hillary Clinton,
whom the
UFT just endorsed for president).

Now it is revealed
that the reauthorization bill for the
NCLB includes a provision requiring schools to introduce “merit pay” or
forfeit
federal money. A motion calling for demonstrations to oppose this
aspect of the
law has been put forward by the Teachers for a Just Contract opposition
group
in the UFT. Certainly, this attempt to undercut union contracts by
allowing
school officials to reward those who bow down to their diktats in the
name of
“merit” should be opposed. But by only focusing on this one aspect, the
social-democratic opposition goes along with the UFT/AFT tops in not
frontally
demanding repeal of the NCLB, including its provisions for allowing
military
recruiters access to the schools and student data, requirements for
compulsory
“high stakes” testing, mandates for school closures, and the whole push
toward
resegregation of the schools ordered by the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the police
are running wild in the schools. A
week ago, an honors student, Isamar Gonzales, was arrested by school
security
guards at East Side Community High School in Manhattan for the “crime”
of
coming to school a few minutes early to talk to her teachers. When her
principal, Mark Federman, intervened, the cops arrested him, too, on
charges of
obstructing government activity and resisting arrest! Both were led
from school
in handcuffs. New York Police Department and city officials defended
this
outrageous abuse, while the principals’ union complained about the
criminalizing
of behavior in the schools. In fact, under Bloomberg/Klein, many
schools have
been turned into mini-police states, and while police are not supposed
to carry
firearms inside the school, its only a matter of time until a student,
teacher
or school official is killed.

Witness what happened
to Brooklyn science teacher Lester
Jacob who was stopped by cops in Brownsville last June for “driving
while
black.” Because he was driving a white Infiniti, police put a knee in
Jacobs’
back and slammed his head onto the car. When a witness said they had
the wrong
person, even though Jacobs was coughing uncontrollably and complained
of chest
pains, they left him in the street, commenting “nice acting.” After his
wife
rushed him to the hospital, doctors said he had suffered a heart
attack. The
next month he had to have open heart surgery. Jacobs is suing the city
in
federal court, as well he should. But the union should take
action to
put a stop to this racist cop victimization of UFT members, students,
immigrants,
minorities and working people generally.

Defend
Debbie Almontaser! Principal of only Arabic-focused school in NYC was
fired after witchhunt by Zionist, union-bashing New York Post. Instead of defending
her, UFT president Weingarten joined the hue and cry.(Photo: Annie Tritt for The New York Times)

The UFT should also
have defended Debbie Almontaser,
principal of the Khalil Gibran Academy, when she was victimized by the New
York Post and then forced to resign by the DOE. The Gibran Academy
was the
first New York City school focusing on Arabic language and culture, and
the
attack on Almontaser is part of the assault against New Yorkers of Near
Eastern
and South Asian origin in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks.
Almontaser’s supposed “crime”? Not having denounced t-shirts reading
“Intifada
NYC”! The intifada is Palestinian school children throwing
rocks at
Israeli tanks and sharpshooters who murder them in cold blood. In fact,
any
defender of democratic rights should stand with the Palestinian
rebellion
against the brutal Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. The Post
is a union-bashing Zionist rag which is always out to get the UFT. But
instead
of defending Almontaser, union leader Weingarten joined in the hue and
cry for
her resignation.

Last
spring, the cops went after white students in Manhattan for carrying
cellphones
and arrested more than 30 black students from Bushwick Community HS in
Brooklyn
as they were going to a funeral (with permission of the principal). Now
they
are arresting honors students, arresting and firing principals and
“excessing”
hundreds of teachers while “wait-listing” students. We say: cops
and
military (recruiters and JROTC) out of the schools!For
teacher-student-worker-parent control of the schools! For reinstatement
of all
dismissed teachers and union control of hiring!

The
whole system of mayoral control has gone hand in hand with a program
for
regimentation of secondary education. This, in turn, is part and parcel
of the
war drive. The link between the war on Iraq and Afghanistan and the war
on
public education in the U.S. is undeniable. Many reformist groups
claiming to
be socialist call for “books, not bombs,” as if it was all a matter of
budget
priorities. But when the capitalist politicians cut back programs
saying the
choice is “guns or butter,” we say that teachers, students, poor,
minority and
working people generally should fight to defeat the war because
it is an
imperialist war for colonial occupation, and
because it is part
of a bosses’ war on working people, minorities, immigrants and
democratic
rights “at home.”

The attacks on public
education are political, and they
must be fought politically. The fact that the unions in general, and
teachers
unions in particular, are beholden to the Democratic Party makes the
UFT/AFT,
NEA et al. co-responsible for the corporate educational “reform,” war
and
regimentation of the population as a whole. It is urgently necessary to
break
with the Democrats, as well the “Working Families Party” (a surrogate
outfit
for those who want to vote for Democratic candidates while holding
their nose)
and minor capitalist parties like the Greens and their erstwhile
candidate, the
populist immigrant-basher Ralph Nader. We need a class-struggle workers
party
to fight for a workers government, the precondition to the necessary revolution
in education so that it serves the interests of those who are exploited
and
oppressed by this system of production for profit, not to fill social
needs. n